When I, a Black person, was told I didn’t know enough about another culture to have opinions on slavery

Last week, something Trumpian must have sparked a race between major publications to put out the most fucked up writings on the topic of slavery.

On Tuesday, The New York Times compared Saartje Baartman–an enslaved Black woman who, in addition to the many other horrors she suffered both before and after her death, was forced to perform in freak shows due to her curvaceousness–to Kim Kardashian. Not to be outdone, The Atlantic’s June cover story, “My Family’s Slave”, written by the late Pulitzer Prize winner Alex Tizon, ignited an even bigger controversy with the tale of an abused Filipino maid, Eudocia “Lola” Tomas Pulida, who spent 56 years taking care of Tizon and his family without pay.

There are many thoughtful critiques of Tizon’s essay that deconstruct the way it works to exonerate the author and obscure his own complicity while further dehumanizing the supposed subject of his piece, and I won’t repeat them. Having learned to tell an oppressor’s redemption story when I see one, I never even finished the article.

I was, however, involved in a few conversations about it with others. Over and over again, I found myself hearing the same disturbing response to those who indicted Tizon: Americans don’t know enough about Filipino culture to be so judgmental about the common labor practice in the island country that he described.

On Thursday, The Huffington Post hosted a roundtable discussion about the piece between three Filipina-American journalists where this response was a significant theme. Carla Herreria, a HuffPost Trends reporter based in Hawaii, argued that she was “not sure if it’s up to non-national Filipinos to decide for a country that has larger problems than we could know […] I think it’s a conversation that Filipino nationals have to have. They’re the ones who understand the complexities of their own country… they’re the ones who are hiring or being hired to escape poverty.”

Because who in America could ever know what it’s like to experience slavery?

There is no problem larger than what Black people who have gone through the four centuries of slavery here–or the century of its afterlives1 and current evolutions–could know. Chattel slavery, which was crucial to creating the global capitalist system under which we now live, directly leads to the conditions that force people like Lola to trade work for food and shelter.

The ongoing consumption of Black labor and the systematic way Black life is made not to matter is an international thread that has held civil societies together since the first ship left Africa’s shores with our ancestors in chains.

Black people have a place in every modern story, because every story since the establishment of the Atlantic Slave Trade is made legible through the anti-Black systems that grew from it. As editor and columnist Ericka Schiche argues, “The fact that Tizon and The Atlantic both approved of the usage of the word ‘slave’ in this context, and used it to sell the story and magazines to an American audience in a country founded on chattel slavery – no one should be shocked or dismissive of the fact that many people (especially Black folks) […] would be pushing back against this.”

It’s likely, however, that when people like Herreria argue that we in America don’t know the context of slave practices of different cultures, they do not even have Black people in mind.

It’s rare for a non-Black person to see Black people as part of their communities enough to be included in any “we.” And even as non-Black people of color critique racial movements for the hyper-visibility of Black struggles (which is baselessly assumed to take away from the struggles of everyone else), they rarely ever acknowledge how this visibility comes alongside a different type of erasure in all the ways that matter.

Lest we forget, TheNew York Times’ Baartman catastrophe and Atlantic piece happened simultaneously. Black pain and death is ever-present, but it is never relevant to the conversation at hand when it counts.

I am Black, and I don’t know many things. But I do know that Black people have an intimate knowledge of what liberation could look like, because we also know best the daily struggle with the vestiges of bondage.

I know that any struggle for liberation that excludes Black voices is not a comprehensive struggle against oppression. And I know that I don’t need to know anything more than this Black life to have something to offer in discussions of freedom.

Tagged:

Hari Ziyad is a New York-based storyteller and the Editor-in-Chief of RaceBaitR. Their work has been featured on Gawker, Out, Ebony, Mic, The Guardian, Colorlines, The Root, Paste Magazine, Black Girl Dangerous, Young Colored and Angry, The Feminist Wire and The Each Other Project. They are also an assistant editor for Vinyl Poetry & Prose and a writer for AFROPUNK.

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laolamvaed

both stories were just more white nonsense. By saying you don’t understand their special brand of slavery they are erasing our perspectives. Black people have no friends. We can’t even be included in conversations of oppression because we don’t get it? wow I get up everday and its another decent into the twilight zone.

Disgusted

Slavery is wrong in any country, anytime. I don’t know anyone who thinks it’s a good idea so to even suggest people can’t make judgments about another culture is outright stupidity. Regardless of the country/culture enslaving another human being is despicable. I take exception to “white nonsense” though because that statement sounds racist to me. 🙁

laolamvaed

don’t care, run over into a space not for you declaring your hurt and making it about you is ‘more white nonsense”

Disgusted

It’s not about me at all, nor would I make it about me. I support you, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a racist comment.

laolamvaed

feel free to take it how you wish, you do not support me st all you insist that my comment is racist why? because I put white and nonsense together, we say that alot over here. You clearly don’t read enough of Hari’s post because all we do is discuss and dissect white nonsense here.

Annetoinette W.

Not to mention that Tizon himself references American chattel slavery as a basis for understanding the wrong that was going on in his household. Like, the late author of the piece made these allusions; to act like Black understandings of slavery, of domination, and its side effects have no place in this discussion is intellectually and ethically dishonest.